Lobo's Lessons

Twenty-three hours to go... and soon, I'm going to be home... Home, where the land beckons, waiting for her traveling son to return. Home, where my parents and siblings await with beaming smiles. Home, where I left half my heart, in this journey to broaden the mind with new knowledge and experience. Twenty-three hours to go...

And to conclude my rather controversial post yesterday, in which I exposed a fraud for whom she really was, I received another private message. However, it was not as I would have expected at all. I include the exchange below (if you missed the previous post, please read that one first). Do tell me what you think of the whole affair if you could spare the time. __________________________________________________________ Ainis Aziz   28 March at 22:44  Report Hi..how you doing..and how was your day??..so nice to hear from you...i really want you to be of help to me, tell me things about Malaysia, about the environment ,the way of living, and if the place is good for investment. because i want to buy a house and invest in Malaysia I really love to know, I think right now you are the only one i know and trust, I have gone .through your profile and i see you are a good person.. i can trust you with your information, please get back to me as soon as possible for me to know the ne...

Starting a few days ago, a young woman sent me a personal message on Facebook. It was a rather interesting message, which lead me to question her authenticity, and even her sanity. The following is the exchange. __________________________________________________________________________ Between  You  and  x xxxxx x xxxxxx  25 March at 14:52  Report How are u doing today?..Your profile caught my Attention and saw we had something in common...so i have decided to contact you...I shall tell u a little about myself am xxxxxxx from sabah a state in Malaysia but currently living here in England.......I intend to visit Malaysia soonest but i don't know anyone in Malaysia.I was hoping maybe we can be friends, Abdullah Mohd Nawi   25 March at 23:03 Sure, send me a friend request and we'll talk. x xxxxxx   26 March at 21:40  Report hello how are you doing today ..actually my late father is from sabah a place in Malaysia but since i was born i have never...

Image credit here Today I read an article in the NST about a young woman who attempted to commit suicide by jumping off the KB Mall rooftop. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your point of view), she was not successful. She jumped right into a safety net waiting below. This got me to thinking why did she do it? As a Malay Muslim she would have believed that nothing would be waiting for her except eternal damnation.Yet she chose to (unsuccessfully) take the fastest way out of her misery. I do not presume to know her story, or her reasons, and based on that alone I cannot pass judgement. That is for the Lord to do in his own time and will. What I can do is draw comparisons to my experiences, and to those of people that I know. I think that almost everyone has had a moment, no matter how brief, where a suicidal thought enters their mind. It doesn't have to be a long lingering thought, festering within the deepest recesses of your mind, just waiting for the right moment to ...

Image credit here It is now coming up on two weeks since the horrifying 6.4 earthquake , 11km deep, ravaged Christchurch and caused death, destruction and total chaos to the city and its inhabitants. Not in the very least, coupled with the 7.1 earthquake on 4 September 2011 and the 5000 or so ensuing aftershocks to date, it has frayed my nerves almost to the brink of exhaustion. I am unable to concentrate on anything at this point in time, and if that wasn’t enough, the 4.8 aftershock followed by 3 subsequent aftershocks were significant enough to put me teetering on the edge. Initially after the first major Canterbury quake, the aftershocks, though annoying and sometimes a little hairy, were bearable because of the knowledge that they wouldn’t be as bad as the initial quake. Well, after the untold destruction of the 22 February quake, and a death toll approaching 200, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Before it used to be “oh, it’s just an aftershock”. Now it’s “is this a b...

It has been a terrifying ordeal. I am drained physically, emotionally and mentally. When the quake hit, I was 5 floors up, in a building right at the heart of Christchurch. It started as any normal aftershock would, with the familiar roaring sound of the very earth moving beneath us. After 2 seconds I realised it was no normal aftershock, as the familiar rumbling turned to violent shaking.  I was thrown off my feet, and landed on my knees. Computer monitors toppled everywhere. The shaking seemed to engulf the world, and my mind almost went blank. I remember falling down. I remember clambering under a table with Bronwyn, my boss. I remember a short respite where as I slowly stood up, I looked out the window and all I saw was smoke and dust, like a bomb had gone off in the middle of the city. My mind still had trouble trying to take everything in. Aftershocks I can take with relative ease... A full-on earthquake.. with me smack bang in the middle of it all... Now that's a tot...

I have been teaching the pre-intermediate class for two days now. I only have 2 students at the moment, as on of them has moved to the intermediate class. After two days in I finally get a clearer picture of what is going on with the subjects of my research. Yuichi, the hearing impaired student (HIS) is performing much better than I expected, even given his hearing impairment. His grammar is rock-solid for the level he is in, and he reads and does the written work exceptionally fast. I find that the only difficulty I have when teaching him is when we try to speak to each other, and I believe that will be the best goal I can set – to enable Yuichi to hold a decent conversation with another person in English, without too much dependence on writing things down to clarify (which is the strategy I have resorted to for the moment for when communication breaks down). My other student, and middle-aged Japanese gentleman who goes by the nickname ‘Hoy-hoy’ is a retired medical technician (a gu...

No, this post is not about the TV show. Today on Facebook, I was very much surprised to see very tense comments on a friend's page. Funny thing was, these tense comments weren't random comments made to outsiders, but were targeted comments, insults and veiled threats, between people I have known and befriended since my high school years. These were the people that I would go fishing with, or take long trips to the countryside just to get coconuts from their family estates. We were beside each other in spite of the trials and tribulations of school life, with exams, girls, science experiments and school bullies all threatening to make it a living hell. And today, after not speaking to each other for about 15 years, and reconnecting through Facebook, a smart comment here, an angry retort there, and very soon after - an invitation to fight it out if the other party had any further problems. This leads me to explore the question - are friends really forever? Is it some sympat...

When you're stuck at a proposal your life doesn't seem to move forward. Ask that to the sweating man whose heart is pounding like a hammer while he is down on one knee, holding out a gold ring, waiting for the fateful answer... It's like time stands still. The same concept applies to the man in the office, sweating it out in the hot summer sun, shivering it out in the cold summer rain, typing and typing away, just so that a bunch of very highly placed professors get the chance to critique his work and shred it to bits before they give the OK for him to proceed with the next phase of his life. That, dear friends, is the proposal. And that is how I have been spending these past few months. It's not like I've been slogging day and night over it; I have had time to do other things, but I guess the combination of a few factors has made it seem rather daunting. First off, I am now working on a deadline. I was supposed to have sent the proposal in on 31 December, b...